


Rocky Road

by sexy-captain-rexy (smolkatsudon)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Complicated Relationships, Enemies by day, F/M, Feels, Finn (Star Wars) - Freeform, Fluff, Leia organa - Freeform, Lovers by night, Poe Dameron - Freeform, Romance, complicated feelings, its complicated, kylo has a soft spot for rey, or something like lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 02:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14250780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolkatsudon/pseuds/sexy-captain-rexy
Summary: Alone in the dead of night, Rey lets herself fall into a peace she hasn't found in a very long time. She let's herself take in the soft flow of the Force, the cool night air, the brisk glinting of the stars above, and the beautiful landscape standing amidst the darkened air. But something comes forth in that dark yet bright night, interrupting the peace and silence with a meeting unanticipated.Rey wouldn't call it unwanted, though. Something deep inside of her wanted this— wanted him.





	Rocky Road

Rocky days and demanding journeys luckily ended with a place to take refuge, leaving the remaining of the Resistance to busy themselves with plans and hopes to rebuild. The days were filled with work and jobs that needed to be done, but the moment the moon climbed to its peak high in the sky meant rest and quiet. More often than not, this meant immediate sleep, unless of course you were Poe, who just could not sleep until he had done much more than he had planned to finish that day. On more occasions than one, Leia would banish him to his room and have Finn to lock the door from the outside in order to force Poe to sleep. It didn’t help that BB8 was always there to break him out and help him lose more and more sleep each day.

Left to her own devices in her own room, small and cozy, Rey chased after sleep but couldn’t seem to catch it. After a brutal game of chase for an hour or so, Rey decided to sit up in her bed and take in the scenery contained behind her small window. She was the lucky one, having been given the room with a window overlooking the flat lands blossoming with grasses, bushes, and flowers inhabiting and flourishing under the planets watchful eyes. Few trees stood alone in the field, darkened against the black sky. Though Rey enjoyed the scene most during the day, when she could see the colours and horizon more easily, she wasn’t going to say that the view at night wasn’t just as amazing.

Suddenly, she felt as if her senses became dulled. An invisible weight pressed onto her shoulders and she freezes on the spot. She knew his feeling, she thought, just as her surroundings began to blur into vaguely familiar shapes and blobs.

“I thought you cut it off,” remarks a low voice from behind her.

Rey’s door was always locked during the night, not because she didn’t trust her friends, but because she didn’t trust anyone else. There’s too much risk being associated with a group that openly opposed the largest and strongest faction of the galaxy and as far as she knew, everyone locked their doors at night for the same reason. Since she distinctly remembered turning the lock handle just as she had always done earlier in the evening, it meant that someone had made a return that sent her stomach aflutter.

“I did,” Rey says without turning around, “did you do something?”

“Don’t accuse me of anything. Snoke is dead, this shouldn’t be happening.” Rey could hear Kylo’s voice and wondered how he’s feeling at the very moment.

When she supposedly cut off their bond, the last thing she saw was his downcast face looking up at her, pleading for something that wasn’t possible. With the lives of those she had met first in her hands, she just couldn’t find any reason to abandon them for the ache in her heart. After all, Kylo could take care of himself, couldn't he? The Resistance needed her and she needed them.

Rey finally decides to turn around from her seat in front of the window, half dreading whatever sight she’d come across. Shirtless? It’s happened once. Dead bodies? Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised. Eating? That would be a first.

Now face to face with the dark and brooding man, surprise dawns over her features unrestrained when she notices that he’s doing nothing but stand there in the same manner of their first official secret meeting. He’s still wearing his all black outfit, announcing— practically screaming— his affiliation with the Dark Side, but something about him seems off and when Rey looks a little closer she notices something familiar.

After Luke’s death, Leia’s performance dipped slightly for just a few days. Not many others really understood or knew anything about it in detail but they made sure to stay thoughtful. She had technically lost all her family and was quite close to losing the rest of it, so when some of them noticed an even more tired expression on her face, even Poe became increasingly and quite obviously worried.

Now, taking on almost a split image of the weary general, Kylo stands in silence. His eyes seem much more downcast than before against his pale skin. He almost looks sickly, or at the very least tired. His uncharacteristically soft brown eyes betray his quiet exterior, glinting with the same, fleeting emotion Poe held when Holdo’s name was mentioned some days ago. Rey soon came to learn the name of that emotion and the story behind it as regret and guilt poisoning the past of the Resistance pilot. Upon forming this connection, Rey felt her heart ache again, but this time, with the company of a pinprick of pain.

“You don’t look so good, are you sick?” Rey asks softly, leaning forward to dangle her legs off the side of the bed. She’s concerned, of course, at the sight of Kylo’s strong figure radiating waves of melancholy.

“No, I’m fine,” Kylo assures softly and without much thought, clenching his hands into a fist.

“Oh,” Rey replies curtly. The conversation takes a steep nosedive and washes a complete silence over them. The two have no more words for the other, but their eyes are still moving. Rey can’t see much around Kylo, but she can bet confidently that he’s in whatever remains of their fleet in his room. That is, if anything even remained considering the accounts she had been given. Or maybe he’s in another base very much like the Starkiller base? She can see Kylo’s eyes slowly moving about as well, taking in what she’s guessing is vague shapes and colours fogged by ambiguity in the background of her figure.

Finally Kylo makes a move; it’s sudden and unexpected and very much like him. A part of Rey whispers immediately for her to be wary and stay on possible attack mode, but the other part begs for her to relax. The Force Bond is delicate, after all, and anything too much for the thin string holding them together to hold would sever it for who knows how long again.

Though it felt like a nice change, Rey could confidently say that she did miss being able to speak to Kylo without the interruption of battle echoing behind their words. She missed the time when the two were just sitting at the fire, comforting each other in their time of need. So what if trusting Kylo might end up costing her life? She wanted to see where this situation would go and what Kylo would do.

Yet, Kylo didn’t say anything. He just kept walking and walking until he stopped a step short from Rey and her bed. He pauses for a moment as if regretting his actions and Rey cocks her head to the side as she maintains her curious eye contact with Kylo. As if seeing her accept his actions so far, Kylo lets out a short and shaky sigh. His shoulders are less tense than when he first appeared, and for the first time in a very, very long time, Rey could sense the familiarity of his warmth.

“Here,” Kylo offers, his voice soft spoken quiet. In his hands is a small bundle wrapped in a tan cloth.

At this point, Rey doesn’t question the probability of Kylo being able to give her something like a gift through the force. She hasn’t finished reading— though more like skimming— through the Sacred Jedi Texts that she swiped from Ach-to and Luke, but whatever’s written in there probably has nothing on Force Bonds. At least, nothing on the specifics anyway. And Kylo was pretty strong with the Force, as was she, so maybe it was a “I’m surprisingly very powerful with the Force and strangely enough stronger than the other— arguably the only— Jedi” kind of thing.

“What is it?” Rey asks curiously, taking the gift. Immediately after having taken it, Rey remembers the very real possibility of it being a tracker, a bomb, or something even more sinister. To her displeasure, Rey knows that accepting the gift would mean a danger to the others sleeping or working in their quarters. Amidst these worries, something in her actively struggles to refute her thoughts, refusing to accept those baseless— yet not so baseless— claims.

Kylo doesn’t answer and instead retracts his hand. Rey frowns at his silence and looks back down at the package in her hands. She places it down in her lap and gingerly pulls apart the carefully enclosed bundle. When the corners pull away, falling onto Rey’s lap, she’s first met with a piece of paper, something not often used considering the usefulness of datapads, computers, and technology. 

“What’s this?” Rey questions, holding it up to her face. Still, Kylo says nothing and Rey investigates it with a careful eye. She notices that it’s actually a folded slip, opening the folds to find a set of numbers written carefully in ink creating a straight and almost perfect line.

“Coordinates to a planet for a new kyber crystal. I don’t know what Luke—” Rey glances up to see Kylo clenching his jaw at the name— “taught you, but you might need a new one for your lightsaber.”

“Is this a trap?” Rey asks with a sigh. She didn’t want to think like this, but she had to. For her life and her future, she had to be cautious.

“No. It’s not,” Kylo answers with an insulted growl. Rey looks up with the paper placed back down on her lap to see Kylo looking away. Without his eyes staring back at her, she couldn’t tell if he was lying or telling the truth.

“How can I believe you?” Rey questions with exasperation, huffing as she narrows her eyes.

She didn’t want this time to be like this.

“Because,” Kylo starts, still without meeting Rey’s eyes, “the next time I face you, I  _ want _ us to be equals.”

Rey felt her heart skip a beat at those words. They hit her hard, taking an immediate spot as one of the most heartfelt words she’s heard in a long time next to Han’s offer of a job with him and Chewbacca. Looking down at her hands, she debates on whether or not to mention that she has no idea on how to build a lightsaber let alone what they’re even made of.

But she eventually decides not to, just so that Kylo has one less thing to worry about amongst the other millions of other worries he needs to deal with. She looks back down at her bundle and finds a small sack coloured maroon. She picks it up, biting back her “what’s this?” fully aware that Kylo wouldn’t answer. With careful and cautious movements, Rey lets out a soft sigh when what she pulls out isn’t a bomb.

Holding the string between her fingers, she dangles the object in front of her eyes. Trailing down, she sees that string first, carefully braided and strong, tied tightly through a hole carved somehow at the top of a stone bearing a single sharp edge at the top. The stone itself is transparent, glistening with multiple colours leaping out in the moonlit room. It’s beautiful, to say the least, and even though Rey has virtually no need for jewelry, it’s a nice thing to have.

“It’s beautiful,” Rey breathes out, “where did you get this?” Her words are just barely more than a whisper as she takes the small stone into her palm. She pulls it closer to her face as her eyes catch the beaming lights twinkling in neat lines flashing across cracks within the crystal. 

Rey hears a small voice, whispering under their breath and looks up from the iridescent stone. Kylo, who’s still standing without meeting Rey’s gaze, seems to have found his tense silence again.

“Kylo?” 

The name felt strange rolling off her tongue. She didn’t normally refer to him as Kylo, not even alone with her own thoughts. Often whenever mentioning the moody, raven haired man, she called him Ben and thought of him as such. However, now that the war was beginning to weigh at its heaviest atop the shoulders of the Resistance members, Rey tried her best to avoid any mention of either Ben or Kylo, but with the other members speaking amongst themselves on their own accords with his more common name, Rey found “Kylo” becoming increasingly easier to say.

“I said—” Kylo takes in a sharp intake of air and drags his eyes towards Rey’s— “I found it and it reminded me of you. I wanted you to have it.”

Rey found her own stiff shoulder dropping as she looks up towards her supposed rival. She took in all that she could see: his tired but warm, brown eyes, his open hands held against his sides, and a slight pink dusting of his pale cheeks. She didn’t know what to say nor what to feel at his words. The amount of emotion he shoved into the simple words of “it reminded me of you” is suffocating as it buzzes around in Rey’s mind. She can’t think of anything else, and to be honest, she doesn’t want to.

“I—” Rey blinks vigorously as she averts her gaze for the first time since the conversation started— “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.”

Rey doesn’t dare look up to the footsteps approaching her again. In her chest, her heart hammers painfully as blood roars in her ears. She feels trapped and cornered, and when Kylo stops in front of her, she can barely keep her breathing steady. Out of the corners of her eyes, she can see Kylo lower a knee to the ground, moving closer to her than he has ever been.

Still looking away, she can feel a hesitant warmth wash over the hand holding the stone. She knows that it’s Kylo, grasping her hand in his larger palm before his fingers curled around her warm skin. There aren’t any words exchanged, just a pleasant serenity coloured in shades of rose as the shadows of the night traversed along the darkened walls of the room.

Outside, the world seems to have moved to a standstill, unmoving and uninterrupting in the dead of night. As the stars twinkle above the soft breaths of the dreaming men and women, a gentle breeze flutters untouched and unbothered through the sky. In the silence, peace spreads over everyone and everything, almost as if there’s nothing to fear and nothing to dread. 

Safe, that’s how Rey feels with Kylo.

As if feeling brave, Kylo lifts himself off the floor and onto the bed next to Rey, causing the soft seat to dip with his weight. He choose the side she had been looking towards, and now left with nowhere else to hide her eyes, she moves her hazel eyes to meet brown. Kylo isn’t smiling, keeping to his ever serious expression as he meets her gaze, but he does shed the meek exterior he so stubbornly clung onto moments ago. He blinks slowly under the moonlight flitting into the room from the window, still preserving the nothing in which no wars, no anguish, and no death persists between the two of them.

In slow and agonizing movements, he brings his arms up from the cloth of the bedsheets and wraps them around Rey shoulders. She can feel his heat radiating out from his clothing on her exposed skin and melts at his gentle and barely there touch. Slowly but surely, Kylo tightens his hold little at a time. When Rey feels her forehead meet the crook of his neck, she closes her eyes and feels her heat slow to a calmer and much more soothing rhythm. The hands she never noticed clenching in tight fists around the stone and nothingness relax as Kylo takes in a slow and long held breath. He rests his head within the crook of her neck as well, resting there as the weight of the world loosens its hold on him— on the both of them.

Within Kylo’s arms, Rey smiles in wonderment, thinking how powerful the feeling in her heart must be to completely erase the war raging just outside the door. She can feel Kylo’s slow breath against the back of her neck and lets out a sigh of her own. Her thoughts run sluggish now, drugged by the happiness flooding through her heart and mind.

All around her are people set on a future that wasn’t ever concrete. Words that meant nothing more than a possibility telling an incomplete story drowned the world she lived in. It would be hard to paint a future with the colours of her hopes and dreams, but she knows she needs to for the sake of herself and everyone else. She wanted it and in order to obtain the gem flickering in the distance, she had to pick her paths carefully.

And hopefully, the destination would be the same, warm arms wrapped around her body always struggling in vain to hide the innermost thoughts of her other half, waiting for her at the end of the road.


End file.
